Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered a potential new drug delivery system. The finding is a biological mechanism for delivery of nanoparticles into tissue. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This work is important because when giving a drug to a patient, it circulates in the blood stream, but often doesn't get into the tissue," said senior author Erkki Ruoslahti, of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research at UCSB. "This is especially true with tumors.

"We believe this method will lead to better, more efficient delivery of drugs," he said. In this study, the scientists used prostate cancer cells as their target, but the method could apply to any type of cell.